


Beast

by Bafflement



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Animagus Harry Potter, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragon Harry Potter, Dragon!Harry, Dragon/Human Hybrid Harry Potter, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Past Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:35:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bafflement/pseuds/Bafflement
Summary: Master of Death? What a load of shit.Memories are difficult to come by, especially when you don't know who you used to be.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Harry Potter/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	1. Prologue I: Wrex and the Myth

He’s surrounded by darkness. There’s no other colour except black, and even if he tries to move his hand up close to his face, he sees nothing, nor does he feel anything. He can’t move; his back is pressed up against something solid, with a fine lining of a slimy substance, and his body is curled up on itself, all of his appendages crossed and stuffed into whatever he’s in. He feels no hunger nor discomfort, because even though he’s probably in the _worst_ and most _uncomfortable position ever_ , he doesn’t feel anything.

He can’t see, he can’t feel, he can’t sense and he can’t smell. He should feel like panicking, but he doesn’t. He’s comfortable and warm. There’s nothing… _wrong_.

But he can hear, and that’s great; it’s the only kind of sense he has, and it was by far the most useful. Because he can open and close his eyes but can’t see, he can attempt to move his arms and legs and body but won’t be able to do anything, and he can’t smell what he’s in, but he can definitely hear what’s going on outside the hardened wall of slime. So even though his ears aren’t near enough _close_ to the wall of slime, he strains his ears—and, isn’t that a peculiar feeling, not being able to tell if it _works_ or not—and listens for any sounds of life.

At first, he hears nothing—just the faint whisper of his breathing, and the sound of distant waves crashing against the rocks—but then he hears a noise, one he’s not familiar with. It starts as a mumble, the sound reaching low and then going high, and then ascending into a high, ear-splitting shriek. It does nothing to his eardrums; the noise, while ear-splitting and hair-raising, isn’t as clear as it should be. The sound is muffled, and even if he _were_ to be outside of wherever he is, he’s pretty damn sure the sound _still_ wouldn’t be able to do anything to him except create a headache or a mild annoyance for him. So he continues to listen, since the noise does nothing. The sound isn’t something he’s familiar with, even when at its highest and lowest pitch, which means wherever he is; he’s not anywhere remotely where he thought he’d end up.

He listens when the noise gets further and further away, and is replaced by other guttural noises, some above his head and some next to him. At first, it bothers him; after all, these noises are completely new and different, but then he relaxes, and enjoys the noise.

Over some of the silences when most of the noise has gone, he tries to duplicate the noises he’s heard. Of course, it doesn’t work, seeing as his mouth refuses to listen to his body and his body refuses to listen to his brain. But he still tries, day after day (and he doesn’t know how long has actually past since he’s come to a certain awareness) to make some effort to move some part of him that isn’t his ears, but it doesn’t work. Over and over again, he becomes disappointed, and frustrated, with his lack of progress.

And it doesn’t help that when he hears noises—and voices—that suspiciously sound like _words_ , he can’t pronounce those either. It doesn’t help when his body starts to feel constricted, and the slime wall starts to dig into the spines in his back, and the knuckles of his hands are starting to push and scrape against the linings, or that his head is starting to ache from having it arched all the time.

He’s frustrated because he’s no longer feeling comfortable and warm. Instead, he’s feeling uncomfortable and over-heated, too pushed in and constricted, and hungry.

It’s a new feeling he doesn’t want, to feel hungry, to want to snap and gnash his teeth at the wall. But he can’t help feeling it, and it’s decidedly unpleasant.

Wherever he is, he wants _out_.

So mustering up all of his strength, he cranes his neck backwards, until the back of his head is resting gently against the wall—and this is when he realises that he’s made progress. He’s actually _made_ progress. His chest vibrates in happiness, and he gives an embarrassed chuff, until the noises he makes have died down. He listens for any additional noises from the outside, but hearing none, he continues, and tries to move his body so that he has enough support to try and push his head through the wall—it couldn’t possibly be anything as thick as metal, so he assumes he’d be able to break out of the wall quite easily.

Except, he puts too much weight on one side of where he is, and he has the sudden sensation of _falling_ —and that, more than anything else, disorientates him; because whatever he’s in is small enough to _fall_ or _roll_ with his weight.

He tumbles head over heel, his cacoon-like shell wrapped protectively around his ever-enlarging body, and it’s somewhat exciting that he’s going somewhere, but disorientating all the same. When he comes to a complete stop, his head uncomfortably on the ground where his legs and tail should be, he listens for any sounds, any movement outside. Just as he starts to receive some sort of noise from the outside, the walls surrounding him start to crack. A large, spidery crack splinters down the side, on his right, and the middle starts to crumble. Light filters in through it.

He keens, nudges the hand closest to the opening even closer, uses his claws to tear at the edges of the crumbled wall, and concentrates on moving the very tip of his tail. It slashes against the wall. The crack splinters off into more directions, the spider-web of destruction going above and behind his head, surrounding him. He hears a sound like running footsteps, and the sudden panic that overwhelms him is used to his advantage; his body coils in tightly and then, after a brief moment, he lunges to the side, spreading his body out as much as it can go, trying to spread his wings at the back.

His scaled wings, and spines, are stuck to the slimed wall, and he crushes his back into it with all of his might.

At once, the protective shell that’s been there since the _beginning_ crumbles all around him, showing him in slime and debris. The light burns his eyes and he hisses, closing them; sounds enter his ears, overwhelmingly loud and heavy against his eardrums; the smell of the sand and the earth overpowers his nostrils, and he lets out an ear-splitting cry of fear and hunger.

The sound of the running footsteps are still there. He opens his eyes slowly, mindful of the light, and wobbles, hesitantly, to his feet. He looks over and there, running towards him, is the largest thing he’s seen (so far). Its head looks like it’s been encased in flesh-hardened armour, and it’s wearing the most ridiculous suit of armour he’s ever known. It’s large, though, so no matter how ridiculous it looks; it’s still a very real threat that’s running straight at him.

As it gets closer, it lets out a large, bellowing yell, and he flinches away from it, turning his head, curling his wings close to his body. He stumbles back, his clawed feet catching on his eggshell, crunching beneath him, shattering it. Slime drips from his body almost smoothly—

And the large beast steps right in front of his face as soon as he looks back.

A frightened keening noise rises in his throat; he’s ready to let it loose—

“What the hell is this,” it growls in a deep voice, staring down at him with red, beaded eyes.

—but instead, he doesn’t; he’s too surprised by the talking armour-clad _thing_ before him. It had _spoken_ the language he’d heard in his shell. Which meant whatever _this_ thing is, it should be trustworthy. He growls somewhat pitifully, straightens up, and takes a step closer to it, his snout raised high to catch its scent.

“It looks to me… like a dragon,” the thing says to itself, thoughtfully, before shaking its head and growling in anger. “But it can’t be—it’s a myth—they’re extinct—been extinct for—”

He takes a deep breath and interrupts its rant with a plume of smoke, which then turns into a blazing fire, pointed upwards, into the dry, heated sky. He stops, looks at the flabbergasted thing with its weird armour-flesh and metal guns, and decides that whatever _it_ is, it’s his. He takes a few confident steps forward, brushes his head against the armour-clad leg, and keens happily.

It grunts above him. “You seem useful,” it says, thoughtfully, “and you can breathe fire.” There’s a nasty, bloodthirsty grin in its voice when it speaks next, “I’ll call you Beast.” He looks up into its red eyes, rumbles, and waits for its name.

He’s not disappointed.

“You, Beast, will call me Wrex.”


	2. Prologue II: Growing Up

“You’re vulnerable,” Wrex grunts, and that’s all the forewarning he receives before he’s unceremoniously picked up by his neck and held under its arm. The other arm, he notices, goes behind its back to hold onto a rather odd-looking gun, and holds it at chest level. Its eyes—small, beady and blood-red—constantly swivel in their sockets as if looking for suitable prey, before they stop dead ahead where there are other _humanoid_ creatures in armour.

Before he even has the forethought of releasing a frightened cry, it’s on the move with him held protectively and tightly under its arm and close to its solid armour. The sound of bullets hurtling past them reaches his ears, followed by the dull thuds of quickened feet on dry desert sand. He flinches, his ears and nose burning, from the sound of the gun in Wrex’s hand going off and the smell it brings with it. The sound continues to ring in his ears, minutes after the first shot of the gun. Being so close to the metallic _thing_ hurts his ears, and the smell of the bullets leaving the gun burns his _nostrils_ , but he’s determined to keep quiet.

He isn’t so eager to die _just_ yet.

The solid rhythm of Wrex running soothes him, as it’s further proof that they’re still alive, even if he has no idea _why_ they’re being targeted. He lifts his head away from its chest and takes in the carnage that surrounds them. The peaceful desert that it had once been is covered in fire, smoke, bullet-shells, blood and _death_. The part-dead trees are nearly blackened by explosives, and up ahead, he notices ships hovering in the air, sending down troops dressed in solid black armour. They’re all holding guns, with various types of weaponry strapped to their backs, and he can’t for the life of him discern their species, much like the ‘Wrex’ that had found him.

The skin of the troops—as little as he can see of it—has oddly raised scale-like patterns on its face, with a head looking oddly reminiscent of a reptile. He sees no tail, and is quietly disappointed that they’re not _his_ species.

“Damn it!” Wrex growls lowly, startling Beast from his observations. He looks to the left, where it’s looking, and finds a smaller ship than the one he’d seen, looking slightly damaged on one wing. Beast makes a noise in distress similar to the tone he hears, but he’s not altogether sold on this “damn it”; the ship still looks functional. The smoke from the burning trees curls towards them, burning Beast’s nostrils and throat. He hacks out a cough, and Wrex sprints faster towards the smaller ship, its arm tightening protectively around him. It dodges the bullets aimed at them professionally, taking out the people on their heels with its lone gun, its expression set in a fierce scowl.

He notices a slight ramp hanging off of the smaller ship, and he finally understands: _this_ is their ship. They’re going to have to manoeuvre themselves onto it without being shot down or worse. At the rate he’s going, his throat is going to be beyond repair by the time they get to it. It’s odd, though, since he’s a _fire-breather_ and smoke and fire shouldn’t bother him, but it _does_. Maybe the fire they’re making is completely different from _his_ fire, and he’s just too young to protect himself from it?

Wrex’s breathing is starting to get faster, and shallower, but it doesn’t faze it one bit; they’re still running straight towards the docking ramp. Once its feet hit the solid white of the ramp, it begins to fold back up on itself. The red and beige coloured _alien_ (and that’s all Beast knows, as of now) starts to slow down until it’s walking instead of running. The ramp completely seals itself, once Beast looks back at it, and he hears Wrex exhale loudly. Beast hears the faint _tinks_ of the bullets hitting the ship, and he lets out a loud exhale as well, nearly chuffing; the damage of the bullets are doing _nothing_ to the strong shell of the ship.

 _It’s very bland on the inside,_ he thinks to himself, as he looks around. _It’s almost like my egg._ The area they find themselves in—the folded up ramp—is cream coloured, with grey trimming at the top and bottom of the walls. Brown and beige coloured boxes litter the area, and as he’s thinking about what the boxes hold inside, Wrex ducks behind one. He’s so _close_ to the box that he can practically _touch_ one—

“Don’t. Move.” The voice, Beast is confused to note, has an undertone of _something_ —something that’s similar to his own dragon-speech, but _different_. It tells him a completely different story from the confident words being spoken; underlying that tone is _fear_. Obviously, whatever—or _whom_ ever—the voice belongs to, is afraid that it will die. Seeing for himself what his Wrex is capable of… he’s inclined to agree.

On the wrong side of Wrex and the reptile-like creature is dead.

Wrex tenses up all of its muscles—which amuses Beast greatly, as _tensing_ was kind of like _moving_ —and snorts. “You think I’m going to listen to you, _Turian_?” The last word, “Turian” (whatever that was) is flung out as an insult, and Wrex turns its whole body to look the _Turian_ dead-on.

The thing, Beast is pleased to note, looks _exactly_ like those humanoid creatures he’d spotted in the far distance. Its grooved and ragged face is a dark brown in colour, with light brown markings dotting over the bridge of its flat nose and face. In its hand is an assault rifle, nearly as long as its arm, and nearly twice as thick, pointed right at Wrex’s heart. The vaguely reptilian humanoid—looking as confident as can be—looks down slightly, and stares at him with small, grey eyes. He curls in on himself at the scrutinising look, tucking his head closer to Wrex’s chest with one eye keeping a look-out.

“Put your gun down,” it spits at Wrex, its eyes never leaving Beast. Slowly, Wrex carefully places the gun it’s holding on the ground and stands back up again, its face still set in a facial expression reminiscent of a sneer. “And the little one.”

“No.”

“No? You’re not in the position to refuse, _Krogan_.”

The reptilian humanoid steps forward, its gun still level with Wrex’s heart, which is a very, _very_ stupid mistake on its part. Beast hasn’t known Wrex for all that long (it’s still daytime from when he’d escaped the confines of his egg), but he knows body language— _and_ the fact that Wrex is built a _lot_ heavier than the reptile. In the split second it takes for the reptile to register surprise at its own actions, Wrex drops Beast to the ground, smacks the gun out of the reptile’s hand as if it’s _nothing_ and grabs hold of its head. A buzzing sound splits the air, and Beast lets out a cry of distress, because the reptile is using his own _language_ against him. The sound presses against his ears, and he quickly pushes his stomach to the ground, his clawed hands covering his eyes and ears. Because he doesn’t want to _listen_ to the frightened scream, the anger, the rage— _anything._

With a distant crunch, the buzzing is gone. All of the negative emotions that have been poured into his language are _gone_ , replaced by silence. Slowly, he takes his claws away from his face, and watches as the headless body of the reptile—sprayed with grey matter and blue blood—falls to the ground, with a toneless _thud_. Wrex picks up both of the guns, slinging one onto its back and keeping the other in its hand, grabs hold of his neck, and pulls him up under his arm again, keeping him close to the armour.

He buries himself as close as he can, feeling the cool metal against his scales, as they set off at a slightly quicker pace than a walk.

The sound of gunfire reaches his ears as Wrex makes his way through the multitude of stacked boxes. Another sound, getting louder, mixes in with the gunfire, and the ship _rocks_ with the force. He keens while Wrex grunts, tightens its arm, and begins to jog, its powerful legs thumping against the ramp. They go up a slow elevator—and why do ships need elevators when there’s _stairs_ that do the same thing?—and go right, where they enter a small alcove, with three separate doors. Windows separate the doors, showing off the interior of the small little rooms, which could hold _maybe_ three Wrex’s.

Wrex opens the door to the middle of one, plops Beast down onto the small seating area that’s basically the whole of the little room and slams the door shut. A locking mechanism clicks the door in place securely. The pounding of feet echo down below. His alien curses, pushes a button on the side of the room and their room ejects from the rest of the ship. They watch as five troops appear in the space they’d ejected from, take their guns out and open fire at them.

Small _tings_ hit the side of their little room. He watches as some of the bullets go flying past his face, completely missing their target. He flinches away and curls up tight in a ball on the seating area.

Wrex grunts, pushes another button, and suddenly, instead of falling, they’re flying _up_ into the atmosphere.

“It’s going to be quite a while before you eat,” Wrex informs him as it plonks down onto the seat next to him with a low groan. Thankfully, since Beast had only just hatched, he wasn’t at all in need of sustenance, and wouldn’t need any for at least another week.

He wasn’t worried about how long ‘quite a while’ could be.

* * *

‘Quite a while’ turns out to be three days. Apparently, if they had chosen a bigger escape pod, or even a small ship, they would’ve gotten to their destination sooner, _but_ since they were panicked and backed into a corner at the time… they were forced to use the _slower_ mode of transportation.

The area they arrive at is a dilapidated building with a large sign at the entrance, which has a blood red skull with the backdrop of black flames. No words surround it, but that’s fine; the people that go there _obviously_ know why they’re going there and what happens inside.

“I hope this dump has some grub,” it says, hitting its fist against a large red button on the side of the automatic sliding doors, its other arm under Beast’s belly in a strong but loose hold. They both enter and the door shuts and locks behind them. Inside, Beast is fascinated by all of the different aliens he sees and the lights and music blaring all around them. Wrex takes them to the side of the large open floor, going through another door, another and another, until finally they stop in front of a door much larger than the few they had previously been through. Two aliens that look exactly like Wrex (except in different facial colours and features) cross their arms across their chests, each of them holding a gun casually pointing in their direction.

“You’re late,” the one on the left says flatly, eying Wrex up and down, its eyes lingering on Beast momentarily before looking Wrex in the eye.

“Ambush,” Wrex replies just as flatly, and the one on the right of the door nods, presses the door button and lets them inside. Beast swivels his neck around to watch the door close and lock behind them, just in case the Wrex-like aliens might follow them. Instead, before the doors are closed completely, he watches as the two guards get back into their original position. When he looks ahead again to see where they are, Beast is surprised to note a very slim blue figure with curling tentacles at the back of its head sitting in a chair behind a desk, its boots sitting casually on the desk with its hands behind its head and its knees crossed. “It’s done,” Wrex tells it.

It raises an eyebrow. Beast jumps out of Wrex’s hold and places himself on the ground beside his imprinted parent, the spines on his back standing erect. The room is large, with open windows and tasteful décor, the walls painted a brilliant purple and orange with swirls delicately painted all over, but the room screams _dangerous_ at him. He wants _desperately_ to leave the room they’ve come into, but he can’t, not without Wrex. All he can really do is try and make himself seem as big as possible.

“Oh?” it says. Its pale blue eyes zero in on him, but dismiss him as a non-threat. It eyes Wrex lazily from its spot on the swivel chair, inclining its head towards the only available seat in front of the desk. Stiffly, Wrex sits in the chair. Beast, however, stays where he is; he doesn’t want to be anywhere _near_ her, and best case scenario, if anything goes wrong, he’ll be able to either escape or fight back. “What about Hedox and his…” its lips pull down at the corners, “ _comrades_?” The words are spat out in distaste, as if the very concept of camaraderie is foreign entities to it that shouldn’t exist.

“Dead,” Wrex replies. A slow smile stretches across its face.

“And the proof?”

Here, Wrex grumbles a word under its breath, presses a few buttons on its omni-tool, and right before their eyes, nearly a dozen pictures of dead bodies—some with heads, some without, some in a pool of blood, some with their eyes open, some with none—can be seen on the floating screen.

The alien laughs as Wrex cuts the screen show off. Opening and rifling around in a drawer in its desk, the alien sits up from its position and hands over a few orange cards over to Wrex.

“As capable as ever,” it purrs. It slides its omni-tool on, and forwards a few names, locations and statements to Wrex’s omnitool. “Your next assignment.” It grins, licking its lips.

Wrex nods, its eyes flickering over the newly acquired text on its omni-tool, then pushes itself to its feet. Beast, feeling safer now that they were heading out, feels his spines lower, squashing protectively against his back. He’s picked up by the scruff of his neck and they leave the room, the blue-skinned alien watching them with its eerie, pale blue gaze.

* * *

After Wrex fills itself up on food, he’s feeling content sitting in Wrex’s lap in the middle of a large ship filled with other aliens on the main deck. These ‘aliens’ were essentially fleshy bipedal things with—what Beast assumes to be—some kind of protection on the top of their heads. He assumes the protective layer may be fur or some kind of plant, but he’s not sure from this distance. They all carried weapons of different sizes, wearing armour that covered them from head to toe, with some aliens faces being uncovered. There were others like Wrex on the deck as well, grunting to each other in low voices far away from their current position.

“We’re going to Tuchanka,” Wrex unnecessarily informs him. Beast twitches, stretching his claws, the sharpened points pinging uselessly off of the krogan’s armour. He twists his neck, his eyes locked on to Wrex’s slitted red eyes. He keens low in his throat. The alien stares back at him flatly, as if he understands Beast’s reservations about this ‘Tuchanka’. He has no idea what a Tuchanka _is_ , but he’ll defer to Wrex’s judgement—Wrex obviously knows what it’s doing. So saying, Wrex pats him briefly on the head and says lowly, “Tuchanka isn’t the best place for hatchlings, but it’s the best place for training.”

Satisfied about Wrex’s response, Beast curls up and lays his head down on the cool metal beneath his body. His legs tuck comfortably beneath him with his tail limply hanging off Wrex’s thigh.

He doesn’t sleep while lying there. Instead, he listens to the pleasant rumblings of the aliens and krogan around him as they discuss battle strategies, the weather (something Beast finds distinctly odd, considering they’re in space—therefore what does _weather_ have to do with anything?) and the different ways to kill someone. He strains his hearing, trying to listen in on some aliens at the other end of the deck, but fails miserably. He huffs in agitation and closes his eyes, hoping having no visual input will help with his audio input.

“—you’re not actually _thinking_ about doing—”

“—and you would not _believe_ how much the fucker bled—”

“—turians wouldn’t leave us alone once they found out that—”

This isn’t what he wants to _hear_. He opens his eyes for a visual, his eyes rolling and his neck twisting to get the furthest people into his line of sight. He wants to hear _them_ , not anyone else; they seem particularly agitated, from what he can see of their body language. Having equal or unequal input from any sense doesn’t seem to make any difference, so he decides to just watch the ones that are the most agitated. He cocks his head, his eyes fixed on them.

“—but don’t you think we should think before we do something like that?” this voice sounds oddly dull to his ears, as if the words have been broken down and reformed wrong. It’s nothing like the two-toned language he prefers. The words come from an oddly shaped bipedal creature with darkened skin, as if it had been burnt beforehand but couldn’t get the ash and soot off.

He feels a mixture of pity and amusement for that poor creature. He doesn’t know what he’d do if things _stuck_ to his scales.

“I can’t see the problem,” the other voice replies, its voice higher in pitch. The strange fleshy humanoid is different from the other one; shorter, less stocky and with those same strangle lumps on its chest as the blue alien he’d seen briefly before. “We just kill the krogan and take off with the black lizard.”

“But what can we do with a _lizard_?” the other asks, clearly confused. Beast tenses, his spines creeping up into a standing position at the insult. He isn’t some overgrown lizard like those turians he’d seen. He had _wings_.

(Not that they’d know that, he doesn’t think; he keeps his wings secured against his side. There’s no use having them splayed out for anyone to walk all over them, after all.)

“Didn’t you pay attention to it? It has _wings_. What kind of lizard has wings?”

So _maybe_ they did realise he has wings. It still doesn’t excuse them from mistaking him for a common _lizard_.

The other one hesitates. “Well, we don’t know much about the rest of the universe, so we can’t exactly _assume_ —”

“Beast,” Wrex rumbles. Beast snaps back to himself and looks up at his alien. “Stop growling.”

He hadn’t even been _aware_ that he’d been growling. He’ll have to work on that.

* * *

When they arrive on Tuchanka, Wrex grabs him and stuffs him under its arm. Its walk is steady but brisk and he barely feels jostled, even if he _does_ feel a lot like freshly killed prey about to be taken to a den and eaten.

This ‘Tuchanka’ is a barren desert filled with nothing but debris and oddly coloured plants that had no business being in this hot climate. The heat on his back makes him feel oddly content; he feels like he could fall asleep right where he is. Maybe for a couple of days or even a couple of months—he wouldn’t be at all opposed to going into a light hibernation period of a few years. The heat is simply _divine_.

He closes his eyes involuntarily, a contented rumble rising from his chest.

“You better not fall asleep on me,” Wrex mutters, almost in resigned amusement. A loud clatter echoes into his ears heralding from Wrex’s armour-clad boot and he opens his eyes, his head whipping up sharply to try and find the source of the noise. The sound, apparently, comes from a damaged piece of wood that looks, almost vaguely, like a door. The door isn’t a door anymore. More like a decorative, wooden rug.

It has its uses. Well, it will _have_ uses, but he doubts it’s ever going to be a door again. It’ll probably be reduced to kindle-bark. He wonders why Wrex didn’t just open the door.

Wrex steamrolls its way into the little wooden hut, with its dirt and grime and leaves, and sets Beast down on the ground, its whole attention seemingly on the glowing orange of its omni-tool on its wrist. Beast knows better, however. Wrex wants to see how he’ll react to the different surroundings. If Beast had been anyone else, or any other _dragon_ , he’d probably burn this little wooden hut down. Instead, he just sits there in docile silence.

He's safe enough with his alien. He doesn’t even mind that this strange little hut doesn’t have a door to close anymore.

Wrex crosses its arms, its eyes moving from the orange glow to Beast. They stay in this position in silence, Wrex cataloguing Beast and Beast waiting for orders—or anything, really. Eventually, Wrex grunts in apparent approval and speaks, its voice low, “I noticed the bastards on deck that had an interest in you. You noticed, too. This makes it easier. We have approximately three weeks to get you into fighting form. That means I have to train you to use your fire; that pitiful little plume of smoke wasn’t a _real_ fire.”

Beast puffs himself up indignantly—that _was_ a _real_ fire!

Wrex rolls its eyes at him but doesn’t comment at his obvious posturing. He deflates slightly and keens, lowering his head to stare at the ground. It wasn’t a real fire, he admits. It was just some smoke and a bit of fire that has honestly taken them both off-guard. So he’d… have to concede… that he needs _training._

Even though he could probably work it out on his own at his own pace. But he isn’t going to let Wrex know _that_.

* * *

Fire-breathing and hunting, it turns out, comes naturally to him. He hardly needs any prompting to crisp, maim and kill when he’s up against something bigger and spikier than him that would eat him alive if given half the chance. He finds this out when Wrex dumps him in a nest of varren (as he’d later learned from his master-parent-caregiver-feeder-alien) that come at him with the intent to kill him and eat him.

Frightened out of his mind, he’d breathed fire on the whole six of them and ran for it. He’d flapped his wings uselessly (his wings were just a bit too fragile right now to actually use them for anything useful) and came to a skidding stop near a dry shrub, four burning (and on fire) varren hot on his heels.

After that, burning things and hunting them came much easier to him. Kill them before they kill you.

Of course, he wasn’t _just_ hunting bull-headed varren. That was a little bit too easy, since as soon as they got a whiff of him, they ran at him with the intent to kill, so he didn’t even have to bother tracking them or doing anything to get their attention other than existing, really.

He hunted pyjaks, even though they were even _less_ of a competition than varren. Varren, at least, knew when to run away. Pyjaks, it seems, have no sense of self-preservation.

The things that he _had_ trouble actually hunting were little desert lizards that liked to pop in and out of the sand like little moles, something that infuriated Beast a hell of a lot. He could never seem to catch a pattern to their random popping and running and jumping and being general nuisances, so tracking them from one place to another was often filled with his internal grumblings and screams of frustration.

He eventually learned, though.

And once he learned, he killed the little shits just so he didn’t have to _hunt_ them anymore.

Other mild annoyances came in trying to eat beautifully flowering vegetation, only to learn that they liked meat, as well. He singed it to death before it could catch him and swallow him whole, which made him thankful that he could control his fire to an extent. No way was he going to die to a _plant_.

“You still need improvement on your fire-breathing,” Wrex comments. Beast snarls and shakes himself. He’d been continuously breathing fire for thirty seconds. He was a little baby dragon that had literally hatched _three weeks ago_ ; of course he needs improvement—

[ _“You’re perfect the way you are, Harry,” Hermione mutters into his hair. He shakes his head and mutters into her collarbone, his voice lost to the skin beneath his lips. “Ginny doesn’t need to fix you—you don’t need_ improvement. _You just need people to be there for you. It’s okay. Tell Ginny.”_

 _A sniffle is her only answer and she shakes her had almost fondly, her arms wrapped around his torso firmly._ ]

—and what the hell was _that_? He freezes, his head cocking from side to side, his eyes roving around the barren wasteland. He could’ve sworn he’d seen two humans embracing, but that’s impossible—only he and Wrex are here.

“But that’ll have to do,” Wrex muses as if to itself. “We have to get back to the ship.”

* * *

Getting onto the ship isn’t the difficult part, since Wrex sort-of _owns_ it and the people on it. The difficult part comes when they actually get onto the ship and Wrex’s underlings point their guns in Wrex’s face. The guns are loaded and they all seem impassive, as if this is just one of the inevitable things of the world.

Wrex looks from one person to another, its face set in a fierce scowl. “So you’re double-crossing me?” it demands.

The apparent leader of the operation—the fleshy alien that had been talking to the burnt-looking one before in the main deck—steps forward and seems to be looking down at Wrex, even though Wrex is a good head and a half taller than her.

He bristles in affront. Wrex is the leader, not _them_. Who did they think they were, showing blatant disrespect towards his alien?

“We were never loyal to you,” the alien informs Wrex. The people behind it nod in agreement. It’s shocking to Beast—sure, he knew there was something _wrong_ going on between this fleshy alien and the darker fleshy one, but to bring _Wrex_ into it? He growls, low in his throat, his spines shuddering and snapping open. They make a crackling noise as he snarls, his tail whipping behind him. The blunt bulb at the end of his tail is a good thumping object to use. He could probably bludgeon the fleshy alien if he burnt it first.

The alien is just a bit too tall for his tail to be of any use at all without some other kind of advantage.

“So, what, you’re going to kill me? Go ahead,” Wrex snorts dismissively. Beast pauses and looks up at his alien, his spines stiff on his back. What? Wrex would just _give up_ —? “See if you can when you’re on fire.”

The alien frowns. “What do you—?”

That’s the only thing it gets out before Beast is snarling and breathing fire at it. Its hair goes up in flames and its amour heats up a brilliant red. He smells the burning of flesh and hears the high pitched screams leaving its mouth—

[ _“NO! HARRY!” Ginny screams, tackling him to the ground. He rolls with the impact, a bright blue spell whizzing over the top of his head. He grunts, pushing her off of him, stands, and helps her up, his wand flicking in the direction of the other person that had tried to handicap him. A plain looking man with brown eyes and brown hair greets his eyes, before he whispers a spell._

_He pushes Ginny behind him as his spell whispers out of his wand and flies at the other man, who barely dodges in time. He whispers lowly to her, “Get the kids. Run.”_

_“I can help—”_

_“And who will help the kids?” he demands. He sends off another spell, turns towards her and kisses her on the lips briefly, before pushing her away. “Go. I’ll be fine.”_ ]

—and turns away, smacking into Wrex’s leg. His alien pulls out a shotgun, cocks it and opens fire. Beast ducks behind Wrex’s legs, twisting around until he’s safe behind some wooden boxes. They won’t last long, but at least it’ll give him time. Anyone that ventures too close to him will be burnt and (hopefully) bludgeoned to death.

The smell of gun smoke and burning flesh burns through his nose, but it’s not an unpleasant smell, not like it had once been when he hadn’t been expecting it. It’s surprisingly nice; the smell of burnt flesh, actually, smells appetising. His stomach gives a gurgle and he chuffs at it, a little amused. Now wasn’t the time, though.

“Beast!” Wrex snaps and Beast turns his head, just in time to see someone coming at him with an assault rifle. If he gets hit, he’s dead. He’s still surprisingly fragile for a dragon, and his scales won’t be able to stop the bullets from piercing his organs. He snarls and smoke rises from his nostrils; he uses the blanketing smog for cover. He spins around, the bulb of his tail smacking into the alien’s ankle. He hears them cry out in pain and he sprints out of his wooden cover, ducking behind even more boxes and listening for the heavy breathing of his alien.

He can’t hear Wrex over the sound of gunshots, screams and aliens speaking. He steps cautiously away from the metal containers and thinks a bit to himself, wondering how he could use them for anything other than cover. He rumbles pleasantly when the idea comes at him. He breathes in a lot of air and exhales it as fire, the burning, burnt orange red consuming the flammable cardboard and making it go up in flames.

It spreads from box to box. He quickly wheels away from it, his eyes searching through the smoke for his alien—there. Wrex is near the back of the room, surrounded by three creatures—two fleshy aliens and one krogan—so he rushes towards them, his claws clacking against the metal. An explosion from behind him rocks him forward; more screams curl around into his ears and he snarls, trying to ignore the obnoxious _noise_.

He comes charging at them and slips between their legs, his tail hitting them in the shins and ankles as he goes. It does nothing to them, since they’re wearing appropriate armour, but the clinking of metal brings their attention down to him. In that instance of distraction, it costs them their lives; Wrex savagely crushes one alien’s head with his hand and shoots the other between the eyes. The krogan tackles Wrex and swats the gun away from it. Snarling, Beast backs away, his whole body tense.

He can’t do anything; he’s so _small_ and if he were to flame that krogan, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to avoid flaming his alien, too.

But, he doesn’t have to worry, since the next time he looks over to Wrex, he finds him standing over the dead body of the krogan, the front of its armour splashed with red.

* * *

“I feel like you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Wrex mutters to him as they sit in the pilot’s room. The pilot—a mousey fleshy alien with greying hair and amber eyes—merely keeps its attention on the screen in front of it, only occasionally switching gears and pushing buttons when needed. “Sure, you can breathe fire. But you can’t actually _bludgeon_ anything yet. Your kind is supposed to be extinct.” It grunts, its heavy brows furrowing. “I have to keep you a secret for as long as I can… that means,” it snarls, turning towards the pilot, “you don’t breathe a word about Beast.”

The pilot nods frantically, its eyes swivelling to eye Beast with wide eyes. “I—I won’t, I swear, just don’t kill me, I’ll pilot and do anything—I just—I won’t tell _anyone_ —”

Wrex grunts in approval and turns towards Beast with a thoughtful look. “I wonder how big you’ll grow to be. Dragons,”—a choked noise escapes the pilot’s throat, as if winded—“grew to be the size of ships, even bigger, depending on their species. I’ve never seen _your_ species before, but… then, I didn’t know many dragons.”

Beast cocks his head curiously. He’d be as big as this ship when he gets older? Well, it’s not like he doesn’t mind—he’s all for it—but where would he _sleep_ if he couldn’t fit in here? Would he even be able to _breathe_ in space, or would he have to find a large enough breathing mask to fit his muzzle? The most important question, of course, would be could he fly beside the ship? Space is odd, and doesn’t act as the ground he treads on, so he isn’t so sure if he’d be able to fly in space without it being incredibly taxing.

If it’s possible, he would love to be of as much use as he can to Wrex.

* * *

“Beast, you’re getting too big to fit through the doors,” Wrex grunts in amusement. Beast makes a low keening noise, his head lowering to the floor, the scruff around his neck feathering against the metal. He stares at Wrex with as much sadness as he can muster into his non-expressive scaled face. It’s true; he can’t fit through the door anymore. His bulk is just too wide for the doors and he’s too heavy for the elevators. He can’t even be tucked under Wrex’s arm anymore. He can’t _lie_ on Wrex anymore.

He wasn’t even near adulthood, and _already_ he was losing the comfort of being smaller than his parent-like caregiver.

If anything, Wrex can lie on _him_ , which it does regularly whenever they had a spare moment.

He hisses and huffs, a spiral of smoke curling from his nostrils. He turns his head away, as well as his body, and slinks further into his room. It’s not even his room; it’s just the loading dock. But he can’t get through any doors, so how could he get to his room, even if he _had_ one?

(He didn’t really need a room; anywhere Wrex was, he was.)

Wrex pats one of his budding horns on his neck, its armoured hands going lower to his neck and scratching at the scales that are blistered and angry. A cluster of spines are coming through his soft skin and his roughened scales, which is, apparently, a sign of maturing into a bigger dragon—which sucks. He doesn’t _want_ more spikes and spines. Even the bulb on his tail has grown a cluster of spikes, something he has to be vigilant about at all times—it wouldn’t do it he accidentally killed Wrex or one of their allies.

He hopes his maturation finishes _soon_ because all this itching and shedding is getting _annoying_.

“We could find a more suitable ship,” Wrex finally suggests into the silence. Trilling, Beast rubs the top of his head softly against Wrex’s thick armour. A rumbling, deep laugh escapes Wrex. “Don’t get too used to the idea—we won’t be able to afford it for a while.”

Beast slumps.

* * *

The room is bigger than he remembers. Even his nest is bigger than he remembers. He stretches and freezes, his eyebrows furrowing—and. That. His eyes pop wide open. Beast doesn’t _have_ eyebrows! He’s a dragon full of scales and spines and spikes and spurs and scruff and—

[ _“C’mon mate, show us your animagus! It can’t be that bad,” Ron wheedles, his arms clasped behind his back. He rocks back onto his heels and quickly amends, “it can’t be_ worse _than mine, at any rate.”_

 _Harry shakes his head with a laugh. “_ Yours _isn’t that bad either, you know? I always thought you acted like a—”_

_“Don’t say it—!”_

_“—bit of an idiot!”_

_Ron slumps over, scowling. “Just because I can turn into a dog doesn’t mean the prerequisite for it is being an idiot.”_

_“I didn’t know you knew that word,” Harry replies, his lips twitching up into a sly grin. “Don’t worry,” he continues, “I know you’re not an idiot_ all _the time.”_

_“Thanks Harry,” Ron rolls his eyes, “I guess Hermione’s rubbed off on me a bit.” At the look he receives from Harry, the tips of his ears start to turn red and the freckles on his face start to slowly camouflage from the blood rushing to his face. “I didn’t mean it that way—”_

_“Being a dog isn’t bad,” Hermione interrupts with a roll of her eyes, completely missing the additional comments from Ron and Harry. “At least_ you _can stay on the ground and not look like a complete idiot.” At Harry’s snicker, Hermione scowls at him, while Ron sighs in relief beside him. “Don’t you start.”_

 _“I feel like_ someone’s _taking the piss,” Ron grumbles to Hermione, eying Harry with a fake scowl, his arms crossed over his broad chest. Harry sticks his tongue out in response._

 _“An_ owl _for Merlin’s sake,” Hermione continues, ignoring Ron. “Do you know how much of an idiot I look when I’m hopping around? No? Well then, be grateful that you get to be adorable and—”_

 _“Hermione,” Harry hurriedly interrupts. Ron gives a near-silent sigh of relief from beside him. “Look, I’ll show you, but—I don’t think this room is quite_ big _enough—”_

 _“Big?” Ron asks incredulously. “What do you mean by—”_ ]

—and his name isn’t Beast.

His eyebrows furrow further on his face and his mouth twists down into a frown. He _knows_ his name is Beast, and yet, he knows that his name is _Harry_. He knows he’s human (and now he _finally_ knows what the name of the fleshy aliens are called) and at the same time a dragon. He’s half and half, and that’s so _confusing_ but it makes sense—

A keening whine escapes his throat when he looks down at himself. He still has his precious, onyx scales. But they’re not all over him as they used to be. They’re just in splatters and clusters up and down his arms and legs and chest. He feels his face with shaking, roughened hands, the pads of his fingers catching on the roughened scales on his face. He’s got more scales on his face, most on his nose and chin. His horns are still fixed at the top of his head—and instead of a smooth, scaled head, he has fur—hair—on top.

He grabs a piece and winces, not expecting the sudden jolt of pain running in his scalp, and down to the base of his neck. He eyes the piece. It’s curly and black, just like his scales and he breathes in shakily. He’s not—he’s not all that different from usual. He’s just—he’s just less dragon and more human.

He rubs at his arms, feeling the cool scales beneath his hands and the spines that are lying flat against his skin. He whimpers, his eyes closing as his hands come up to shield his face. It’s—so—foreign.

What happened to the body that could protect him from any injury? The body that wasn’t soft to the touch, but cool and hard and _heavy_? Why was he stuck like _this_?

His body is _foreign_ and he just wants to get _out_ of it—

“Who the hell are you?” Wrex bluntly asks at his door. He startles, falling ungracefully to his butt, his arms flying out on either side of him. He keens, a loud, mourning sound and scrambles to his knees—and fails, the spurs on the back of his legs digging into the backs of his thighs. He whines and shakily gets to his feet. He trills as he stumbles over towards Wrex, who has an expression of incredulity, suspicion and bafflement on its face.

It would’ve looked funny if he didn’t feel so—so _not_ Beast or _Harry._ He’s a bastardised version of both. He flounders a bit once he’s in reaching distance of Wrex, who seems to be deciding on whether or not to take out a gun and shoot him right then and there before he gets too close. He shakes his head frantically, his black hair whipping around his face and some of it sticking to his lips. His coordination is _terrible_ in this Harry-form. All flailing limbs and weird bipedal stances, with splayed out toes and weird looking fingers. It would’ve been better if he was able to move properly, then maybe Wrex would realise it was him without him having to say anything.

His chest rumbles. He opens his mouth to speak, but—instead, it’s… he doesn’t speak. He makes an odd, chirping wail instead. Mortified, he looks down at the ground. He couldn’t even control _that_ , the _easiest_ sound in his proper Beast-form!

“… I have got to be going crazy,” Wrex mutters to itself before the krogan seemingly finds the courage to ask, “Beast?”

Chirping happily, Harry-Beast flings himself at Wrex and nuzzles his nose into Wrex’s cheek, who seems to just be standing there shell shocked in bewilderment. With his newfound digits, he wastes no time on curling his fingers tightly into the chinks in the krogan’s armour, the elongated talons at the tip of each finger pinging uselessly off the metal. An explosive, exasperated sigh leaves Wrex’s lips.

“Of course.” It pauses and Harry-Beast pulls away, looking at Wrex who seems to be looking thoughtful. A truly, bloodthirsty grin takes over its features. “You’ll be able to come on missions with me now without arousing suspicion.”

Harry nods and chirps in agreement and goes back to nuzzling the cantankerous krogan, who mutters threats under his breath with no real heat behind them.

“… but first I’ll have to teach you how to speak like a proper—human.”

* * *

The most frustrating thing about being able to speak, Harry-Beast feels, is that he has a certain undertone to his voice, as if he has an extra vocal cord that he needs to be using at all times. It is, apparently, something the turians have. Instead of being able to speak like a proper human, or even a proper krogan like Wrex, Harry-Beast speaks like a turian; something that rankles Wrex like nothing else.

Perhaps it’s just a carry on from being a dragon.

It’s probably why he likes being a dragon better than being a human-dragon-turian hybrid. At least when he’s a dragon, he’s no longer Harry-Beast; he’s just _Beast_ and he can just pretend that his human-walking episode never happened.

He is thankful, however, for Wrex teaching him how to speak. Calling the krogan father was definitely awkward (once he finally figured out what ‘genders’ were) for the battle-roughened warlord, especially with his two-toned voice, but the krogan had at least accepted him as part of his family.

(He doesn’t know what it means for him that he has to go on some kind of Rite of Passage when battle anger consumes him at maturation so that Wrex could claim him in a Right of Parentage, but he’ll do what Wrex wants him to do.)

* * *

Harry-Beast fidgets with his armour. It doesn’t feel _right_ ; his scales can protect his insides and can do a lot better protecting him from bullets and shrapnel and fire than the flimsy _armour_ , but he needs to be covered when he’s Harry-Beast. His skin is a lot more fragile (like when he was a little dragon, just broken from his shell) than he’s used to. He’s not comfortable with the fact that he needs to compromise with actually having _armour_ verses being protected.

He huffs and crosses his arms, leaning against the krogan beside him. “They’re taking too long,” he grumbles to Wrex. “I want to stretch my wings and go _home_.” He keens quietly to Wrex and rubs his helmet-covered head against Wrex’s face.

Wrex sighs. “Stop that.”

“Not until I have to leave,” Harry-Beast—Harry mutters. He twitches, his head lying against the krogan’s shoulder. He has to remember that he’s Harry like this. He’s not Beast. Beast is ferocious and decidedly _not_ fragile or squishy. Beast is everything that Harry is not. Harry is everything that Beast is not, and that—he wants—

[ _Ginny looks down at James, her smile warm and affectionate, her arms wrapped around his chest. James’s flushed, scared face meets Harry’s long muzzle and he shakes his head, turning his face into Ginny’s chest. His hands clutch at her sky blue dress. “It’s okay, James,” Ginny whispers into his ear, nodding at Harry. “That’s daddy.”_

_“But—” he sniffles, refusing to look in Harry’s direction, “—daddy’s scary.”_

_“He may_ look _scary, but he’ll never hurt you,” Ginny soothes, patting his back. “He’ll turn back, and he’ll be the same daddy as he always was.”_

 _Harry rolls his eyes. How could he be anyone else other than he was? Just because he was a dragon didn’t mean anything—he’s still_ him.]

—he wants to be Beast right now. He never wants to be Harry. Harry’s small and fleshy and fragile. Beast is so much _more_ and at least _Beast_ can protect Wrex.

A rustling of leaves greets his ears and they both stand up straight, Harry-Beast— _Harry,_ you’re _Harry now you’re not Beast_ —turns and steps away from his krogan and his back straightens, his arms moving to fold behind his back instead of in front of him.

Two turian come out of the foliage. One looks at Harry and then to Wrex, while the other calmly makes their way towards them. When they’re standing a good feet away from them, Harry and Wrex glance at each other, then at the nervously shuffling turians. He raises an eyebrow that they can’t see.

“We brought your goods,” the turian on the right says. The inflection under his tone of voice—those separate vocal cords—suggest that he’s telling the truth. No one who has sub-vocals like him and turian can lie with their sub-vocals. Omit information, yes, but not outright lie.

“Show them to me,” Wrex demands, and the turian on the left hesitates. That brief hesitation makes Harry hesitate as well, because why would they be hesitating—

—and that brief moment of hesitation is all they need. Humans and turian alike step out from the foliage, with their guns at the ready, and they open fire. Harry isn’t quite fast enough to dodge bullets and some slam into his armour with frightening force. He’ll be bruised later, he just knows it. He spins around, makes sure Wrex is fine (he’s always fine—nothing can really kill him short of blowing up the planet he’s on) and ducks out of the way of the bullets streaming at them.

He nimbly moves out of the area; everyone else is preoccupied by Wrex. They don’t care about _Harry_ ; he looks like just another turian and krogan are _much_ more lethal in close-quarters. That moment is the moment he takes to change into Beast—Beast, who is getting progressively bigger and meaner and spikier the closer he gets to maturation. He lets out an ear-splitting dual-toned cry that jolts all turian in the area. It staggers them momentarily and he jumps into the sky, unfolding his wings and turning around until he’s just above the hoard of double-crossers. He opens his mouth and spews out burning, red fire.

It catches on some turians and some trees. Everything is burning and it smells of smoke. There are screams and cries and it’s the only thing Beast really cares about—he cares about keeping Wrex safe and _alive._

A few bullets graze his scale amour. It’ll only make him shed later, so he doesn’t worry about it and he continues on, flapping his wings until he shoots up higher. When he’s as high as he wants to be and they’re all but little pyjaks on the ground, he dives at them, pulling his wings in close to his body and his tail ramrod straight. He swoops and grabs a couple of humans and turians up with his claws and flies up high again, shredding them until they’re nothing but meat and skin.

He screeches and comes back into a dive, swooping once again at the immobile turian. This time, instead of grabbing onto the little creatures, he breathes fire on them.

They burn.

* * *

“—can’t believe they double-crossed me. Again,” Wrex grumbles and Beast trills in amusement, his head lying against the cool metal of his hanger. He doesn’t know _why_ Wrex can’t believe it. If it’s happened once, chances are it’s going to happen again and again until you get better or _new_ people for the job. Wrex rolls his eyes at him. “I thought they’d at least _listen_ to me, but no. They have to go and get themselves killed.”

Beast chuffs. Wrex’s right, of course; they should’ve _listened_ to the krogan about double-crossing him. He’d _said before_ that if they double-crossed him, they’d end up dead. And did they listen? No. Idiots.

“I’ll have to recruit _again_.”

Beast sighs, turning his head away. Recruiting wasn’t… difficult. It was just tedious. They didn’t even _need_ any underlings, since they got most missions completed by themselves anyway. He knows why Wrex _wants_ them (just in case Wrex or Beast got into trouble and they needed some kind of backup) but they didn’t really _need_ any more. Plus, Beast is everything that Wrex needs. He doesn’t _need_ anyone else.

* * *

Tuchanka doesn’t look much different from when he’d been there years ago when he was first learning how to control his fire. It’s still the hottest planet he’s ever been on (which is still a bonus for him; the heat is heavenly on his scales and absolutely blistering on his human skin) and the driest, arid place he’s ever seen. Every building he sees is broken down into rubble and debris, cement on the ground damaged with cracks spiralling outward with rocks oozing out of rooves in small pebbles and giant boulders.

They looked like dens of his make, looking like they’d collapse with a strong breeze but sturdy and resilient to the habitants that know otherwise. He doesn’t know why they’re back here after so many years, but he’s learnt to just follow Wrex’s lead.

They pass many other krogan, their suspicious stares like knives against his back. Even though Wrex trusts him, he knows the krogan do not; he looks like a turian in his specialised armour and, from what he’s learnt from Wrex across the years, turian and krogan don’t get along. That’s why he stays as close to Wrex as he can without seeming weak.

When Wrex notices all the stares they elicit, he snarls at the krogan with their guns drawn to get back to work. The krogan startle with snarls of their own on their lips, but grudgingly holster their guns and go back to idly standing guard to chosen houses.

It takes them approximately an hour of walking to get to their destination, which is a large arena with surprisingly intact architecture. The walls surrounding the arena, which are roughly nine feet tall, stand miraculously intact, with small spider-like cracks cascading down their rough exterior.

When they step foot into the arena, Wrex turns around to look at him, his mouth set into a thin line. Harry stays where he is, watching his krogan-father intently.

“I bring you here for your Rite of Passage,” Wrex rumbles, his voice startingly loud against the silence of the vast arena. The krogan crosses his arms across his chest with his legs spread apart in a loose, sturdy stance. “As your krantt, I will fight alongside you. As your battlemaster, I will encourage your rage. As your father, I hope you succeed.” He looks up at the blisteringly hot sky free of flying creatures. He then turns his head to look at Harry, his mouth still drawn severely. “When I press this button,” he gestures towards a small, green button next to the stairs to the arena, “your Rite of Passage will begin.”

Folding his arms and considering the krogan before him, he slowly nods, his mind working furiously. He’d heard Wrex talk about the Rite of Passage before, that heralded the awakening of krogans reaching maturity. Even though Wrex suggested it years ago, he didn’t think _he_ would be included. As a hybrid of dragon and human, he thought he would be scorned. He thought he would never have the chance to prove his worth to his father, krantt and battlemaster.

He guesses this is his one chance to prove that he would be worthy of joining the Urdnot clan.

Wrex must’ve sensed his resolve because, in the next moment, he presses the green button. The arena rumbles, small pebbles getting kicked up by the ground’s vibration. Harry switches his stance, his keen ears listening to the scurrying of many legs beneath his armour-clad boots.

He transforms, his fully adult dragon body expanding into the arena, his sheer size dwarfing the nine foot walls. His tail lashes out behind him as he flares his wings. Wrex grasps onto his scales and drags himself up until he’s situated behind his neck with his legs wrapped securely around a particularly large horn at the base of his neck.

The rumbling stops, and in the silence, a screech reaches his ears. When he looks down, he sees varren. He huffs a breath and leaps into the air, his powerful wings supporting his weight. Behind him, he can hear Wrex unholstering his gun.

Varren are the easiest animal to kill with fire. He’s learnt that lesson years and years ago. So when he’s at the apex of his flight, where he can see the whole arena without turning his head, he takes in the largest breath he can. Without much effort, he dives, his mouth opening to spew out a cascade of fire. The cries of dying varren reach his ears while he watches as more of them crawl out from beneath the cement of the arena.

Knowing how much fire he can breathe at a time, he decides to forego burning and decides to kill them with blunt force. He slams into the ground, killing a few beneath his clawed feet, and turns around in a circle, his spiked tail skewering and maiming varren as they rush at him. Gunfire spews from his back with the sound of Wrex laughing. Every shot from his gun elicits a high-pitch squeal, while every slam of his tail bludgeons and cracks skulls and kills any varren unfortunate enough to still be alive after being shot.

When the rumbling dies down and there are no more screeches, Wrex climbs down from his body and hits a different button. Before the next stage continues, Wrex climbs back up into his seated position.

“One wave down, two to go!” Wrex cackles, the metal of his gun clinking into his toughened scales. “Get ready for fire!”

_Fire?_

With clicking and chittering from the openings of cracks in the arena walls come red, armoured bugs the size of Wrex. With curiosity and trepidation, Beast waits on his haunches, his eyes narrowing to slits to make out what kind of prey they are. When they breathe fire onto him, he nearly laughs. With a chuffing, amused noise from deep within his throat, he spreads his wings and flaps them, hard, sending the bugs skidding across the rough ground. Fire doesn’t bother him. Smoke doesn’t bother him.

“I knew klixen couldn’t slow you down!” Wrex bellows on a laugh, his gun firing with accuracy and speed at the armour of the bugs. He watches, transfixed, as the armour of the bugs fly off, revealing their squishy, vulnerable insides.

He wonders, briefly, what they taste like.

Immediately, he springs his thought into action, lunging his neck out to grab one of the bugs with his sharp teeth. Crunching them and listening to their dying chitters, he realises they don’t taste bad. They don’t taste good, either. It was a snack for slaking hunger. He growls, pleased, and devours as many of the klixen as he can, his claws and teeth making short work of their armoured bodies.

Some, he swallows whole. Others, he decides to roast.

He makes short work of the amount of klixen which sates his belly. He huffs in amusement when Wrex remarks, sarcastically, “That’s not usually how we go about killing them.” He cleans the tip of his nose with his tongue and licks around his mouth to clean the bits of viscera and blood off, waiting for Wrex’s signal.

The next and final wave doesn’t come by pressing a button. Instead, when Beast takes a step forward, the earth below him and around the arena rumbles. Wrex, seated at the base of his neck, lets out a low laugh. The rumbling continues to get louder, with small structures on the walls of the arena trembling, continuing to stay erect in defiance.

Beast jerks his head up, scanning the horizon, with his ears and eyes on high alert. He watches, with some alarm, as something bigger than him, writing beneath the sand, comes at the arena at a ridiculously high pace. His spines rattle with unease with some standing on end. Taking his chance before whatever it is reaches him, he leaps into the air, his wings flaring out and catching on the barely-there wind. He pushes his wings down and raises himself higher into the air, just as a large, worm-like, scaled creature bursts out from the sand with a high-pitched, rattling cry.

The sound reverberates within his skull as the creature makes a sudden, gurgling, sizzling noise. At the sound of the creature, Wrex yells at him, “Fly! It spits acid!”

Keeping his peripherals on the creature, he summersaults in the air, just missing the globule of acid as it sails past his head. Wrex curses on his back while he shoots, the sound of his voice being lost between the loud roar of Beast and the keening screech of the worm-like creature. Turning around so he’s facing the creature dead-on, he spews fire at it, some of the fire burning a trail into its grotesque mouth and burning its blue tongue, while some fire burns away at the tendrils around its head.

Without waiting for the creature to make its next move, Beast flaps his wings furiously to get higher than the worm. As he’s about to dive-bomb it, the thing dives underground, with the sand shifting in its wake. Cursing in his head, he circles around the sand, trying to pin-point where the thing is going next.

In the next moment, the thing crashes upwards into his scaled belly, the wind being knocked from his lungs. It claws at his vulnerable hide and makes a sizzling, horrifyingly familiar noise. In pain, Beast screeches, his dual-toned voice vibrating throughout his body and into the worm-like creature. It thrashes against him, not letting go, so he uses his tail to whip up and smash into its body as hard as he can while bullets fly into its open maw. The sound of metal and screeching and the smell of smoke is the only thing Beast can hear when he uses his forearms to tear into the flesh below him.

With a cry, the thing unhands him and dives back into the ground from whence it came. Over the rumbling and low keens Beast makes, Wrex yells, “The Thresher Maw is nothing! Hit it once more!”

With the encouragement of Wrex, he keeps his eyes steady and roving over the sand. His eyes pinpoint its location beneath the grains, where it rumbles, shrieks and spits the loudest. Instead of waiting for the ‘Thresher Maw’ to get to him, he dives into the sand with his mouth ready to breathe fire and his legs outstretched to maim. It screeches in pain when his claws dig into its flesh. He uses his mouth to tear chunks of meat from its body and face. It thrashes in his grasp and tries to throw acid into his face one last time when he thrusts his barbed, horned tail straight between its head and gaping mouth, its head splitting open with a wet _crack_.

It lets out one last dying gurgle before falling to the ground, its smashed head bleeding into the sand around it.

* * *

The krogan are, understandably, upset. Not that they would call it upset, as they are warriors that only know anger, but that’s what it is, for they missed the bloodiest Rite of Passage to date. They even, to their disbelief and growing horror (not that they would call these emotions as such), missed out on seeing a Thresher Maw be killed by a fire-breathing dragon that was almost the size of the Thresher Maw.

The only reason Wrex and he are still on this planet is because, before they had the chance to leave, the krogan had wanted to know why a turian was amongst their people.

“Those are extinct!” Wreav exclaims angrily, his red eyes narrowed into slits when Wrex provides him with why they used the Rite of Passage arena. “Stop bullshitting me!”

Wrex rolls his eyes then headbutts Wreav hard enough that the krogan remains dazed and stays down. “I’m not going to explain myself to _you_. Just know that this,” he gestures towards Harry, who is standing awkwardly and watching the exchange, “is Urdnot Beast, part of the Urdnot clan.”

* * *

“We have our next assignment,” Wrex rumbles to Beast, who is reclining in the sun far away from the settlement on Tuchanka. Wrex is lying comfortably against Beasts’ belly, his clunky armour digging into the more vulnerable scales. “The Shadowbroker wants someone called ‘Fist’ dead. We’ll head out and gather information tomorrow. For now, I think we’ve earned a break.”

* * *

Wrex is _his_.

Beast will stop at _nothing_ to keep his parent-krogan-caregiver-friend safe. Just like he’d once done with his other friends—the ones he dreamed about. So when he gets a strong feeling of _wrongness_ , he follows his gut instinct and keeps to Wrex’s side like glue. The special glue that didn’t wear off after only a week in the rain.

When they’d found Fists’ bodyguards, and no trace of the man, he’d begun to get suspicious. The assignment the Shadowbroker sent them on wasn’t supposed to have any problems, since Fist was supposed to be easy to find. Unfortunately, after many ambushes and false-leads, the chase was starting to get on his and Wrex’s nerves.

He can tell Wrex is bemused by the sudden over protectiveness, but he’s not about to explain—what would he say? That he _‘had a feeling’_? Wrex wouldn’t buy that for a _second_ and he sure as hell wouldn’t listen to Beast if he so much as breathed a word about the feeling.

So instead, he just sticks to Wrex like glue.

It works, in the end. Because Wrex could’ve had his skull caved in, if Beast hadn’t interfered and gotten _his_ ribs caved in, instead.

He guesses his gut instincts are pretty spot on when it comes to people he loves.

* * *

“Fist will pay,” Wrex informs him when Beast wakes up in his nest. He furrows his brows—because what did Fist have to do with anything? At his apparent confusion, Wrex continues gruffly, “Fist is the one that nearly killed me and in the end, hurt you. He’ll die by my hand.”

Beast huffs out a tired chirp, dark spots hovering in the corners of his eyes. It could’ve been worse, he feels. Wrex could’ve died.

Besides. He has scales. Wrex doesn’t.


End file.
